The alternative to taking democratic self-governance seriously, part deux...

The Economist has a fascinating discussion of the deepening democratic and economic crisis in Zimbabwe (Thailand is in a similar boat, lately, of course and America and much of the international community is hanging on by the hair of their barely serious enough commitments to democratic institutions and ideals, though they are definitely taking steps backwards these last few years. Thank god democratic cultures are compensating for the lack of respect by democratic governments for democratic freedoms with a very quiet, very real individually-led resistance to pressure group and government imposition and a transition to a world of great and more genuinely democratic self-governance).

The Economist, Zimbabwe: No democracy, no bread and butter, September 21, 2006.

http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=7950047

Money quote, as Andrew Sullivan would say:

"There is no resolution in sight. Clearing up the economy depends on sorting out the politics, and that depends on Mr Mugabe leaving office. He shows absolutely no sign of doing so. The police, the army and the ruling party are growing stronger, at the expense of such state institutions as parliament and the courts. Some observers believe that the situation is so bad it could become explosive.

So it could, but continued years of quiet desperation seem more likely. The opposition—the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the unions, the churches and civic groups—have failed to unite in putting as much pressure on the government as possible. They did get together in a “Save Zimbabwe” convention in July, promising mass resistance, but nothing came of it. Though other groups backed the unions' planned march, they made it clear it was not a joint action. The MDC, itself split, said it would watch with “keen interest” how the authorities reacted. Morgan Tsvangirai, the party's founder, has been saying since March that mass action is in the works, predicting a “winter of discontent”. But Zimbabwe's winter has passed, with much discontent, and little action."

Somehow it's not really occurred to the Economist editors that perhaps pressure doesn't work. Which seems so ironic, since American journalists and politicians and pressure groups spend so much time defending the practice, with a definitely transformed language in the last couple of years and simultaneously as if it's a foregone conclusion. Seems to me that if something was that true, you wouldn't have to spend so much time defending it. It would just be true. Hmm.

In the meantime, Zimbabwe becomes yet another example in another line of failures for pressure tactics to seriously resolve important political problems, in this case democratic government.

And if you take a look at this article you will discover that the absence of credible democratic institutions definitely has consequences for an economy and a people.

Maybe what Zimbabwe needs is some real pressure. Maybe we need to threaten to invade them. Or to actually invade them. Maybe that's too far. Or maybe that's not far enough. Who knows when you are working with such a sloppy conception of moderate sensibilities.

Here's a really wild suggestion: maybe pressure doesn't work (beyond the short term, that is, and with long term consequences).
I'm surprised with so much failure, we don't see more people really questioning this. Perhaps it is more important to be right than to seriously question your assumptions. Or maybe, and more likely, people are just too scared.

And maybe that is the larger problem.

Threatening paranoid dictators makes them more paranoid. But just causes with high ideals get a lot done in lieu of threats. Just ask the Baltic Republics and Mikhail Gorbachev. Or if you want to ask someone who has failed with pressure tactics, just ask Hamas or Hezbollah or Israel or the IRA or the Ulster Unionists or a million other parties who have pressured consistently as failed political strategy for much of their existence.

Failure is one of the best teachers for humanity. This one has got to follow it's own course, I guess. For the sake of the people of Zimbabwe, I sure hope this is a lesson that we learn sooner rather than later. Because a lot of lives and decent existence for many people hang in the balance.

Can you name a serious issue that has been resolved, for good, with pressure tactics?

The environment cleaned up? Wealth spread more equitably? Democracy guaranteed in Zimbabwe and Thailand? Nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea prevented? Morality restored? The war in Iraq under control?

Yeah, me neither.

It's amazing we have so much confidence in the strategy, isn't it?

It'd be harder to maintain our strategy if we didn't know that it was Malcolm X and not Martin Luther King who really ushered in civil rights in America.

Thank god pressure resolved issues of race for us.

I can't think of where terrorist groups get their taste for power and the use of force, can you?

Thank god we're much more civilized than all that.

Perhaps if we build a bigger nuclear warhead designed to pressure all issues of the day in the right direction, we can finally be rid of all of this thinking and debating and discussing and fruitless engagement and really get serious about taking some action in the world.

We'll call it the Democracy Bomb. We'll send Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta, Joe Peschi and Robert DeNiro, George Bush and Tony Blair to deliver to the world as our final and most serious pressure tactic to finally rid us all of all these pesky political, economic, and cultural problems.

We'll call our campaign The Right Answers on Democratic Questions or Else Campaign. We'll have U2 and Toby Keith do a concert benefit.
And we'll make Zimbabwe our example.

We send over enough bombs, people will eventually get the message.

And Zimbabwe will finally figure out that when we say Democracy, we mean business.

Or perhaps we could just take democratic ideals, institutions, thought, expression, engagement, negotiation, elections and free exchange more seriously.

Just an idea.

Ideas for Zimbabwe:

Why not organize people to vote, either with ballot boxes or with their feet or with their peaceful non-violent resistance to the Mugabe government, for a credible opposition candidate or party?

Why not organize peaceful non-resistance as was done in the Baltic Republics in the early 90's or the bloodless Cedar Revolution in Lebanon in 2005, to undermine confidence in the government's ability to enforce it's rule?

Why not just make clear to the government that noone recognizes their authority?

I would favor pressuring the Mugabe government if that tactic showed any promise anywhere in the world, right now. It doesn't.

So perhaps it's time to consider alternatives.

Maybe Martin Luther King wasn't such a dupe. Maybe Malcolm X was a distraction from the worthy progress that King was trying to make on civil rights issues. And maybe our cynicism about this legacy and the legacies of so many important democratic advancements is what is responsible for so many of our problems, today.

Just a thought.

Love,
Ben

The Johnny Cash covers...

I'm going to start this by saying that I fuckin' love Johnny Cash...not a little bit...a lot...

And the reason why I love Johnny Cash can be summed up in the large body of his music and his autobiography, Cash, and the brilliant movie about him, Walk the Line...

But most of all, it can be summed up in Johnny Cash's covers...

The reason why I love Johnny Cash is because he's a tough sum bitch who knew what it was like to be down and what it was like to want your freedom and who, out of all of that, seemed to be a friend to everyone he met...he seemed to love everyone...

And that love for people is found best, I think, in his covers...
Johnny Cash covered everyone...everyone...he's all over the fuckin' place...and I fuckin' love it...

If you have not heard the American Recordings by Johnny Cash, I highly, highly recommend them...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Cash_discography

Covers of Trent Reznor's Hurt, Chris Cornell's Rusty Cage, Depeche Mode's Personal Jesus, the Eagles' Desperado, Paul Simon's Bridge Over Troubled Waters, Roberta Flack's The First Time I Saw Your Face, Neil Diamond's Solitary Man, Tom Petty's I Won't Back Down, David Allan Coe's Would You Lay With Me (in a Field of Stone) ...

And the best goddamned version of U2's One that I have ever heard, including U2's version, as much as I've come to love that song...

This and a million other classic Cash and covers...

And this is the same man who hung with Billy Graham and Ozzy Osbourne...

Johnny Cash had a lot of warts...but he was, at heart, a decent man who was a friend to everyone...

And that's why I love Johnny Cash...for the same reason why I love Mark Twain...

Because their fundamental natures were to like people...to love them...not to villify or judge or hurt them...

I also love U2's later music much more, now that I've heard Johnny Cash's cover of One...they can do whatever music they want to...I'd much rather them do whatever the fuck they want then follow any pattern that I or anyone else would set out for them...that goes for Brandi too...

Thanks, Johnny...for reaching out so far beyond yourself...and for helping me see worthiness in every person and every artist...

Love,
Ben

The alternative to taking democratic self-governance seriously

The Washington Post has a decent article on the military coup in Thailand subverting Thailand's democratic institutions to remove a Prime Minister who may be engaged in a cash for votes scheme to keep power.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/23/AR2006092300372.html?sub=AR

"Analysts note that Thaksin's adversaries had yet to exhaust all legal means of opposing him, and they said the checks and balances of Thailand's constitutional monarchy had recently begun to function.

With a nod from the king, Thaksin loyalists on an election commission were purged by the still largely independent Supreme Court -- opening the way for a more level playing field in elections that were set to be held in the coming months. Thaksin's critics say his party was already gearing up for a cash-for-votes campaign that would have kept him in power.

Instead, with the military now in charge, Thailand has reverted to martial law. At least four of Thaksin's top aides have been detained by military authorities, who have also outlawed political meetings of five or more people. TV and radio stations have been warned to prevent criticism of the new military government, with armed soldiers stationed inside or near major domestic networks as a reminder. The military authority on Friday also named an official body to probe allegations of corruption under Thaksin.

Resistance to military control has already begun to fester. A group of about 100 university students staged an ingenious protest on Friday near an upscale shopping mall. To avoid violating the new military rules against political gatherings, they clustered themselves in groups of twos or threes across a broad public area.

"This coup is not what we wanted," said a 19-year-old university protester who declined to give his name, but held a sign saying: "No to Thaksin, No to the Coup."

"Thailand needs real democracy," he said, "and we don't feel this was the right way to achieve it."

We take democracy for granted in the U.S. This is what it looks like when democratic institutions are not taken seriously. It's a path that humanity took for most of its history up until the last 200 years or so, in America and France and the rest of the civilized world, and still very recently for much of the rest of the world. It's a path full of tragedy and failure.

It is also the logical conclusion of a philosophy of force rather than thought and conscience being the primary weapon of those pursuing what they hope are good purposes. It is the reason why the democratic countries in the world support liberal institutions so seriously which support freedoms that we all take for granted.

We should not be surprised that terrorism is taken more seriously as a tool of warfare, that militarism is romanticized, that nuclear proliferation has taken such a sad turn, that radical and fundamentalist forces have gained so much sway, and that thoughtful engagement has taken such a back seat when the obsession in even the most mature democracies, these days, is with the clearly failed and foolish notion that real, sustainable change can be forced or that force can make those we disagree with feel the pain of our weapons of power.

We should not be surprised that force is used when force is so romanticized everywhere in the modern world, in this foolish and small-minded political moment. We shouldn't be surprised that when noone takes thoughtful engagement seriously, that weapons and power are used instead of thoughts and words.

The whole world has gone mad taking freedom for granted and all the while exercising as much as each person pleases.

Did noone take the same history classes I took?

Was the Catholic Church able to make Martin Luther or the Protestant Reformation go away with force and threats and intimidation? No.

Did the British Empire successfully squelch Mohatma Ghandi's Independence Movement with military force and political pressure? No.

Did local governments in the South in America undermine the civil rights movement with the use of dogs and watercannons and police force? No.

Did the Soviet Union put out the fire of freedom by murdering one or even millions of people? No.

Did Adolph Hitler and the Nazi regime conquer the world around a philosophy of force and totalitarian rule by military strategy based around maximum show of force? No.

Can anyone name a successful form of government that has sustained itself primarily through force?

Nazism? Communism? Fascism? Imperialism? Monarchy? Even democracy?

Before the democratic revolution that formed the first sustainable democracy in the world in the United States, what animated those founders that committed their lives, fortunes, and liberty to the cause of a democratic America?

Did George Washington corral the American colonists and apply sufficient political pressure on them so that they would go along with the scheme? No.

Did Benjamin Franklin rally to force the colonial governments to support an effort to break free of Great Britain? No.

What animated the American revolution was ideals about humanity. Force can be used in the name of those ideals, when no other option is available. But it should be used as little as possible, not as standard operating procedure.

The American revolutionaries used force because they believed -- rightly, likely -- that peaceful means were not available to secure their freedom and their right to a self-determined government. They also believed, rightly, that democratic self-governance was more important than any particular issue between themselves and the British government.

Caleb Carr suggests in his essay in the American history volume in the What If? series of counterfactual history that the American revolution could have been avoided if an American representative in the British parliament, like William Penn, could have negotiated greater American representative voice in parliament and thus both averted the war and ended slavery in America earlier, given a British Empire that outlawed slavery decades earlier than the bloody civil war was able to produce in the United States.

But Caleb was wrong. The fundamental issue between the American colonies and the British government was not slavery or representation in the British empire. It was democratic self-governance. A principle that is fundamental to the world we live in today and fundamental to the free development of individual conscience.

Caleb, like so much of the democratic world, nevertheless the non-democratic world, these days, just did not take that principle, the ideals that animate it, and the realities that necessitate it, seriously enough.

Self-governance does not rationalize the use of force whenever a democratic or non-democratic government or group does not get its way. To the contrary, it necessitates freedom of conscience, thought, expression and all the rest that is fundamental to making the quality of our lives and the world better.

It is a principle that is variously found in liberal and conservative thought, and even amongst theocrats and radicals. It is found in Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, and every other religious tradition, at some point in their histories. It is the cornerstone of a liberal intellectual tradition, which is, generally, the foundation for every freedom that we take for granted in modern liberal democracies.

It is the foundation for our ability to ponder the use of force at every turn and to study and support philosophies of force and intimidation like Communism, Naziism, Fascism, theocracy, and the lesser evils of socialism and the various impositions of liberal and conservative governments and bureaucrats.

That same liberal intellectual tradition is the basis for any seriously thougtful consideration of morality or conscience, which are meaningless without taking seriously the freedom of conscience and thought and study and learning and expression and engagement.

It is the foundation for our economic abundance, our educated civilization, our cultural traditions centered around thought and knowledge and understanding as the basis for our cultural evolution, above and beyond the biological evolution of intelligence that this tradition affords us the opportunity to study and consider and debate and discuss and prove and disprove and study and consider and debate still more.

And this idea of democratic self-governance -- by political institutions and by individuals -- is what affords all of this. It is the space, the breathing room, in which all of this development of our thoughts and ideas of life that animate our individual lives and cultural heritage takes place.

Humanity, decency, civility, generosity, humility, forgiveness, open-mindedness, compassion, intelligence, thoughtfulness, courage, idealism, perspective, realism, honesty, sincerity, equality, equity, freedom, love...

These and many more values are what animate this tradition of free thought and free will and conscience and which now and always transcend any and every legal or political institution, no matter its power.

This is the essence of goodness. We do not want a world where free people return slaves because fugitive slave laws command it. We do not want a world where Germans turn in Jews because of legal requirements. We do not want a world where freedom of religion is denied because Communist or other legal institutions deny it. We do not want a world where Indians or African Americans are denied their independence or their right to vote because laws deny them, where they are forced to comply or submit to those laws instead of non-violent resistance and peaceful stands of conscience.

We do not want a world where laws trump conscience.

We want a world where conscience does exactly as it should. Where conscience trumps law and anything else that comes in conflict with conscience and its development.

The learning and the egagement and the thought involved with conscience needs freedom to grow and thrive. Conscience, and those of us who depend on it -- which is all of us -- cannot grow and thrive without the freedom to do so. Our progress and the learning and growth that makes that progress possible is dependent on as much freedom as possible and necessary to support the learning that is the basis for our consciences.

And that freedom thus necessitates as little aggression as is possible and necessary to support that learning and growth.

It is a fundamental reality of human learning, growth, and development. And we ignore it at the expense of the credibility of efforts that do so and the credibility of those who do so.

The alternative to democratic self-governance, for individuals and for nations and governments, is not a world commanded by force. It is a world in constant conflict with that fundamental reality until it comes to terms with it.

It has always been the case. And it will always be the case, whether we recognize and come to terms with that fact of life or not.

Love,
Ben